AllThingsD » campus

Making Sure the Next Zuckerberg or Gates Stays Put at Harvard

Kara Swisher — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:40:11 +0000

Earlier today, Harvard University and New Enterprise Associates announced the Experiment Fund, aimed at making sure that future Mark Zuckerbergs and Bill Gates can stay on campus and innovate without having to head West.

The irony of the pair of legendary entrepreneurs dropping out — decades apart — of the even more legendary university to start two of tech most significant companies, Facebook and Microsoft.

No longer, apparently.

The early-stage incubator, which will award funding to four to six start-ups in amounts from $250,000 to $500,000. It will focus on seed ventures in the Cambridge, Mass. area around Harvard, which includes many other schools such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Experiment Fund came from an idea born Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, which involved NEA. Today, SEAS Dean Cherry Murray hosted an event that unveiled the initiative.

But, while faculty members will advise for the fund, Harvard has no financial stake.

In an interview NEA’s Patrick Chung said the intent was to enable talented students to “build a company here in Boston rather than have to go elsewhere.”

NEA will have full-time staffers working on the fund, investing in a wide range of companies. It has already backed a health app company, as well as a live Internet television offering.

“There has been an envy of the left coast, certainly,” said Chung. “Now, these talented engineers don’t have to leave when they reach the boundaries of the university where the ideas are formed.”

Added Chung: “They can walk right out of class and into a place that can make those start-ups real.”

In other words, let’s hope the third time’s a charm.

Here’s the map of exactly where the Experiment Fund is and official press release:

XFund press release

After New CEO Scott "Nice Guy" Thompson Meets Yahoo VPs, It's Time for All-Hands Meeting to Say Hello!

Kara Swisher — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 18:07:59 +0000

Here’s the news that came out of a meeting that newborn Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson had yesterday afternoon with the VP-and-above staff of the Silicon Valley Internet giant:

No. 1: Yahoo is both a media and tech company.

No. 2: His focus for the next four weeks will be internal meetings and getting to know the staff.

No. 3: Thompson uses the following Yahoo products — email, finance and news.

No. 4: He is very good at explaining what eBay’s PayPal — where he just served as its president — is.

“If he can do that, maybe he can let us all finally know what Yahoo is, too,” joked one VP, referencing the well-known difficulty Yahoo’s CEOs have had with clearly defining the company’s mission.

But Thompson — whom every single person I spoke to called a “nice guy” — declined to say much about the stuff everyone really wanted to know, from the Asian assets (no comment!) to the possible investments by private equity firms (no comment!) and more (no comment!).

Most VPs I interviewed seemed to have a wait-and-see attitude about Thompson, who is not the kind of high-profile hire some had expected. Of prime worry: The steep learning curve he might have, in a time that requires urgency.

“He’s not the game-changer, but he seems very competent,” said another VP. “We’ll see.”

Indeed, we will. And, to start, Thompson is on display for the entire Yahoo staff at an all-hands employee meeting on Yahoo’s Sunnyvale campus, which is taking place right now.

More to come on that soon, as my embeds call in reports! (Was my invite lost in the mail? Not very nice!)

MyForce Pushes a Panic-Button App for the Campus

Lauren Goode — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 23:20:17 +0000

Today’s shootings at Virginia Tech are another reminder that, despite a relatively new mandate for universities to provide student communities with timely warnings in the event of danger, danger could still occur, leaving those involved feeling helpless.

One security company has been looking to the device many students have in their hands at all times — their smartphone — to see if a one-touch security app could mean even faster response times.

Colorado-based MyForce has developed the MyForce Campus System, with a compatible mobile app, for university safety officials to receive alerts placed within campus borders. It provides access to such details as a student’s location, health conditions and emergency contacts. The app works on iPhone, BlackBerry and Android smartphones.

The app overrides the phone’s lock feature so — as long as the user has the MyForce app open — the interface will always be accessible, though the screen may dim a bit. If a user is in imminent danger, he or she can press the large button featured on the app that sends an immediate notification to MyForce and to campus security officials (provided they are equipped to use the MyForce monitoring software). MyForce also begins to pinpoint the user’s GPS location and record streaming audio from the phone. (MyForce says this information remains private in the company’s database, aside from sharing it with law enforcement officials at the time of the emergency. It can also be submitted later on as evidence of a crime.)

When the user sends an alert, the phone vibrates and also prompts the user to enter a PIN code — so if it’s a misfire that the user didn’t mean to send, he or she can disarm the app by entering in the PIN. At that point, MyForce says it then stops tracking the user.

“The one thing students always have in their hands these days is a smartphone,” said Brad Zotti, MyForce’s co-founder. The idea for the app occurred to him when he was visiting a college campus and thought about integrating the “blue light” emergency phone stands into a mobile phone. “Even if you call 911, it might take some time for your location to be recognized,” he said. “And other security apps promise to send texts or emails to your closest contacts, but who knows if or when they’ll be able to respond?”

MyForce is currently being used at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. The privately owned company just signed a deal with e2Campus, another school security solutions company, to potentially bring the mobile-app version of the “blue light” system to e2Campus’ client base of around 800 schools in the U.S.

Part of MyForce’s challenge will be convincing more schools to use the app. There may be some resistance on the part of school law enforcement bodies to adopt a third-party security monitoring system, and there could also be varying layers of approval needed at the administrative level.

Even if administrators don’t officially opt in to the MyForce monitoring system, students and parents can still purchase the app themselves, though it may offer a less immediate response action. In that case, MyForce still offers to work with school officials to create a virtual “geo-fence” around a college campus that establishes which areas should be monitored. If a student is in danger and presses the button within that geo-fence, the alert goes to MyForce’s dashboard, and MyForce can then call campus security directly.

It won’t cost anything to download the mobile app, but subscriptions to MyForce cost $11.99 per month or $119 annually.

Since the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, many schools have put more sophisticated emergency alert systems in place. Universities are required under the Clery Act to provide campus crime reports and timely warnings in potentially dangerous situations.

As we’re reminded today, there are instances in which no amount of campus security, call boxes or instantaneous mobile applications can prevent danger. And apps like MyForce rely on working wireless and data networks in order to send emergency notifications.

Hopefully, as the technology improves, more solutions will emerge to bring help to users in desperate situations and speed up response times even more.

A Few Questions for Yahoo Product Dude Blake Irving -- Who, Thankfully, Does Not Want to Make a Bid (Video)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 18:39:40 +0000

While wandering around Yahoo’s campus in Sunnyvale, Calif. — where I had several fingers pointed at me, although it’s not polite to do so — for its annual Product Runway event last week, I got to spend a few minutes with its Chief Product Officer Blake Irving.

Irving, as you will see here, remains an upbeat and even jaunty figure at the troubled Silicon Valley Internet giant — even though his job has been made a quantum level more difficult by the swirl around the possible sale of Yahoo and its leadership morass.

Add to that major attrition and morale issues, especially in its product engineering staff, at the very same time Yahoo needs to prove that it can launch innovative products to keep up with the Googles, Facebooks and others.

That’s Irving’s thankless job, which was why he was touting a number of products last week, including Yahoo’s Livestand news reader that was finally released to the public.

Here he is talking about that and more in an interview with me, including the fact that he will not be bidding for Yahoo (I had to ask!):

[ See post to watch video ]

Awkward! As Microsoft Marketing Event Opens, Its Longtime Marketing Head Announces Surprise Retirement

Kara Swisher — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 16:43:56 +0000

Timing is everything and, sometimes, very awkward.

Today at its Redmond, Wash., campus, Microsoft is hosting a splashy online “marketing leadership summit” titled “Imagine 2011″–a gathering of top marketing execs from across the globe, most of whom are advertising clients of its online division.

Also today: Its longtime head of global marketing, Mich Mathews, announced her departure–to the surprise of many Microsoft execs here, in fact–via a report in Ad Age.

In the article, she said she had told execs at Microsoft just last night.

Mathews, who is probably Microsoft’s top woman executive, has been at the software giant for a dog’s age–22 years. (BoomTown met the sharp-witted and often pointed exec in the early 1990s, when she was in charge of the PR operations for the company.)

As SVP of Microsoft’s Central Marketing Group, Mathews oversees a $1 billion budget for Microsoft products such as Windows, Xbox , Window Phone 7 and its Bing search service.

While Microsoft will be conducting a global search for a replacement, several sources said the most obvious internal candidate for the job is Yusuf Mehdi, who is SVP for its Online Audience Business.

He leads global product management, strategic partnerships, business development and U.S. marketing execution for the unit.

Another strong internal possibility: Chris Capossela, who just left his job as SVP of the Microsoft Business division for unspecified duties around social initiatives. He had a similar job to Mehdi’s, with key marketing duties.

Attendees at the Imagine event were buzzing about the Mathews news, taking some focus off the program, which included an opening speech by CEO Steve Ballmer.

Ballmer did not mention Mathews onstage, which was a by-the-book overview of its online ad offerings.

Another sticky situation for Microsoft: The Imagine event was organized by another top woman exec at Microsoft, global ad sales head Carolyn Everson.

But, she left the company in mid-February after only six months, for essentially the same job at Microsoft partner Facebook.

Since then Microsoft and Facebook have been wrangling over the talent raid, including Microsoft even considering legal action to block the move.

(In yet another unrelated embarrassing situation–here’s an excerpt from a memoir by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, in which he alleges co-founder Bill Gates tried to shanghai him out of shares when he was sick with cancer.)

Like I said: Awkward!

With Jobs Definitely Mulling Appearance at iPad Event, Let's Hope the Focus Is on the Product

Kara Swisher — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:31:39 +0000

According to several sources close to the situation, Apple CEO Steve Jobs–who is on a health-related leave from the company–is definitely considering an appearance at its big iPad 2 event tomorrow.

But the possibility–which would be a big sensation at the San Francisco gathering and has been subject to great speculation–is also just as definitely not confirmed as yet, stressed sources.

If he did appear, sources said, Jobs would make at least a brief appearance on stage along with other top company execs in showing off Apple’s latest version of it hugely popular tablet.

The new device reportedly has a sleeker look, as well as a camera and other improvements, changes that tech’s top showman would certainly love to tout and that his legions of fans would like to see him introduce.

But what BoomTown would like to see would be more of a focus on the iPad 2 itself, rather than armchair diagnoses of Jobs’s fitness based on any appearance he might make.

That’s no small thing, given the appalling series of photos and video that have surfaced recently, which show the Silicon Valley icon from the worst possible angle and looking quite gaunt.

As I have written before, and as you can see from the photo above taken at last year’s D: All Things Digital conference interview, it is clear Jobs has suffered due to his bout with a form of pancreatic cancer.

Due to nutritional issues, his weight has suffered, one of the key reasons Jobs seems to have taken this latest leave.

That said, in recent weeks, he has made all kinds of public appearances both at Apple’s Cupertino campus and in Silicon Valley restaurants, including a high-profile dinner with President Barack Obama. Jobs sat immediately to the left of the president.

If he decides to make another outing tomorrow, it is certainly with the knowledge that everyone will be trying to figure out his health from a stage appearance.

That’s a risk for Jobs, of course, who relishes in introducing Apple products in presentations that typically garner well-deserved accolades.

Given how innovative most of those products are, what would be a welcome change in the coverage of Jobs’s personal struggles would be to show a level of respect to him by paying more attention to what bells and whistles the iPad 2 has rather than to how his jeans are fitting.

There is no question, with its latest iteration, Apple is making sure consumers realize that it is coming out with a second, flashier version, even before other manufacturers–mostly using the new Honeycomb version of Google’s Android mobile operating system–are still scrambling to get their initial competing devices to market.

That’s the truly dramatic story to watch here, rather than needlessly rubbernecking about the struggles of one man–albeit, a very significant man–to regain his health.

Inside Facebook's Big Move to Menlo Park

Liz Gannes — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 09:00:39 +0000

Facebook is holding a press conference later today to announce it will move to a campus in Menlo Park, Calif., that the company expects to become its long-term home.

News of the move was first reported in the Palo Alto Daily Post in November, and multiple reports of real-estate transactions have been published since. (Those realtors are a chatty bunch!)

Facebook will finally make things official on Tuesday at Menlo Park City Hall.

Its relatively new office complex is on the east side of Highway 101, near the Dumbarton Bridge and not much else. It was formerly occupied by Sun Microsystems, which moved out after being bought by Oracle. When Sun occupied the buildings, most employees had private offices, so Facebook has already been working to tear down walls to create the sort of open floor plan it enjoys at its current office. According to a former Sun employee, every time he’s passed by in recent weeks, the dumpsters have been overstuffed with detritus.

Coincidentally, the address for the new office park is 1601 Willow Road; Facebook’s current main building is 1601 S. California Avenue in Palo Alto.

Facebook’s current offices in Stanford Research Park are definitely less cool than the company’s original home, which was surrounded by restaurants and cafés in downtown Palo Alto. And eastern Menlo Park is much, much less cool. It’s also less bikeable and convenient to public transportation.

But it is considerable consolation to employees that the campus is more accessible to San Francisco, especially relative to most other nearby major tech campuses in the deep south Peninsula and South Bay.

Facebook moved to its current offices in just 2009, and has since expanded down the street to a building on Page Mill Road that currently holds much of its nontechnical staff. The company currently employs 2,000 people, although sources say it expects to grow to as many as 3,500 before the end of 2011.

Staffers don’t have much reason to venture out, since they are fed three gourmet meals a day plus unlimited snacks.

Prior to the 2009 move, Facebook had expanded to 10 or more buildings in downtown Palo Alto, where it had operated since formalizing operations after being founded by Mark Zuckerberg and some of his Harvard classmates in 2004. The company celebrated its seventh birthday last week.

For most of those years, Facebook offered employees a $600 monthly stipend if they lived within a mile of the offices. When the company uprooted itself two years ago to California Avenue and ended the stipend program, many employees moved their homes out of the immediate area. Facebook now offers multiple shuttles per day from San Francisco and from Caltrain stations near its offices.

Moving from Palo Alto’s main business district to a quiet office park owned by Stanford was a big change for the company, but a necessary one after it outgrew the downtown area. Many of the company’s former downtown offices are now occupied by the analytics start-up Palantir.

Those noisy, frequent shuttle buses that come with a swarm of young employees migrating to work every day are among the annoyances that caused much tension with the residential neighborhood that surrounds Facebook’s current office on California Avenue. Residents of the College Terrace neighborhood have persuaded the city of Palo Alto to institute an actively enforced two-hour parking limit, in part to keep Facebooker vehicles contained in the company’s designated parking lots.

Commenters on local news discussion boards complain that these NIMBY folks drove Facebook, its employees’ business and corporate tax revenue out of town. But the reality is that the social networking giant is too big for its current space, which it had said from the beginning was temporary.

The new Menlo Park campus has 57 acres and one million square feet of office space, and Facebook has already reportedly purchased nearby buildings, likely to ensure it has room for further growth.

Plus, fostering a close-knit pod of employees all living within walking distance of the office has become less important as Facebook expanded. With the company saying it’s likely to go public next year, expectations are that many employees will be buying mansions in the suburbs and pieds-à-terre in the city soon enough.

(You might ask, why do I know so much about the minutiae of Facebook’s office locations? Well, in addition to having covered the company for the last six years or so, I grew up in Palo Alto, my mother lives around the block from Facebook’s current offices (where I am now in constant fear of parking tickets) and my husband (as mentioned in my ethics statement) has done research for the company off and on for the last three years.)

Happy 10th Birthday, Wikipedia! What's Next? (Video)

Liz Gannes — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 18:04:34 +0000

Wikipedia now seems like an enduring institution on the Web, but the site was only founded 10 years ago, tomorrow.

Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, says it is just recently that the site has gotten itself on sustainable financial footing, and has become widely accepted as a useful, quality resource.

We stopped by the nonprofit’s San Francisco headquarters, which is located amidst a sea of tech companies in the city’s SOMA district, on the eve of the big anniversary, which Wikipedia is celebrating with a set of relatively mellow user meet-ups around the world.

Gardner spoke about the evolution of Wikimedia as an organization, and set out its goals for the coming years. We videoed the part of the interview where she sets the scene for the 10th anniversary.

[ See post to watch video ]

Wikipedia is coming off a successful grassroots fundraiser, where it was able to raise $16 million from users, in part due to founder Jimmy Wales’s face greeting users every time they visited the site until the end of the campaign. That’s double the amount raised in a similar campaign the year before.

And over the last 18 months, Wikimedia orchestrated a wide-scale community discussion of its strategy, aided by collaboration expert Eugene Eric Kim, which resulted in a set of goals to take the organization and its many volunteers forward.

Wikipedia now has cumulative 380 million edits, resulting in 17.8 million articles in 250 languages by eight million user accounts, of which about 100,000 edit at least five times per month. It has 52 people in its San Francisco headquarters, which Gardner took over in 2007.

The nonprofit’s three-part mandate is to increase Wikipedia participation, quality and reach. Its big focus for the coming year will be reach, according to Gardner, specifically targeting poorer areas of the world where Wikipedia has so far proved to be less popular.

The idea, said Gardner, is that if people in these places have the tools and exposure to contribute to Wikipedia, the resulting content will be better representative of the world, as well as more comprehensive.

“You can’t blame editors for not being representative,” said Gardner. “The way to solve this is not to make them feel bad.”

A major implementation of the initiative will be opening a Wikimedia office in India in the next couple of months. Gardner had just recently returned from a trip to India when we spoke.

Meanwhile, Wikimedia’s product team is also working to redo its registration and discussion tools, and future projects include a better system for understanding user reputations.

The company has also started a campus ambassador program at colleges, which Gardner said is promising in part due to the folks who have turned out so far. Unlike with Wikipedia, where 87 percent of contributors are men, the campus ambassador volunteers were 50 percent women.

Another college effort is a program with 25 public policy classes to improve the Wikipedia pages on a particular subject matter.

And on the infrastructure front, Wikimedia is finally moving its data center out of the hurricane zone in Florida to a dedicated space in Virginia. The nonprofit is also looking to cache the site from more locations (it currently does so in Amsterdam) so it can be more quickly accessible in more parts of the world.

Apple Buys Old HP Campus

John Paczkowski — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 18:23:18 +0000

Hewlett-Packard has found a buyer for its decades-old campus at 19091 Pruneridge Avenue in Cupertino, Calif.

Apple.

About a five-minute drive from Apple headquarters, the 98-acre parcel of land is adjacent to 50 acres Apple acquired back in 2006 and will be used to house a workforce that’s expanding nearly as quickly as the market for iOS devices.

“We now occupy 57 buildings in Cupertino and our campus is bursting at the seams,” Apple spokesman Steve Dowling told the Mercury News, which first reported the story. “These offices will give us more space for our employees as we continue to grow.”

No word on HP’s asking price for the parcel, but real estate experts estimate that it may have been $300 million or more.

Kno Prices Its Student Tablets at $599 and $899 to Ship by End of the Year

Kara Swisher — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 05:00:01 +0000

Kno, the high-profile Silicon Valley start-up trying to jump-start a market for tablets focused on students, announced tonight that it will have a limited number available by the end of the year for sale at prices of $599 and $899.

The lower price is for its single-screen device, while the clamshell double-screen version is more expensive.

Kno would not say exactly how many it has ordered for its first tablet production run–the device is being built by China’s Foxconn–but co-founder and CEO Osman Rashid said in an interview earlier today with BoomTown that units would number “in the thousands.”

Rashid said the Kno tablet will initially be aimed at 10 college campuses across the U.S., although he also declined to name them.

“We are going to do online and offline marketing, in a very focused approach,” he said, noting that Kno would be working with some college bookstores too.

Marketing a new and complex product like the Kno will take a lot of effort and cash, especially since it is an increasingly competitive market for mobile and portable computing products that includes Apple, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Google, Amazon, Dell and many others.

Kno recently raised another $46 million in funding to add to a $10 million round, and sources said that the Santa Clara, Calif., company could be back out raising even more early next year.

Its current backers include prominent venture players like Andreessen Horowitz and First Round Capital, along with investors Mike Maples and Ron Conway.

Kno’s Rashid said his company pushed the go button after getting good feedback from students in a beta test, half of whom used the single-screen device and the other half the two screens, along with its related education platform software.

“We found that 85 percent of those using the single screen wanted the dual-screen version and that those using two screens took three times more notes,” said Rashid. “Students said they love the fact that they can write in the textbook itself and it appears the way it needs to be, even in digital form.”

The first Kno will have an aluminum body, and the company will also offer a set of accessories, such as a cover and a stand.

And Kno will watch initial sales carefully. “As a start-up, we want to make sure we are meeting demand, but also that we roll it out in a careful approach,” said Rashid.

Indeed–and it will be interesting to see how that goes for the ambitious and innovative Kno.

Until the results are in, here is the official press release from Kno:

Kno Announces Pricing and Pre-Order Availability for Tablet Textbook; Pays for Itself in 3 Semesters

Delivers Significant Student Impact for Less than 1% the Cost of a 4-Year College Education

Santa Clara, CA–November 9, 2010–Kno, Inc., a powerful, groundbreaking tablet textbook designed specifically for students and the education market, today revealed the price of its 14.1 inch single and dual-screen tablets at $599 and $899, respectively. The company also announced that it is now accepting a limited number of pre-orders for an initial shipment that is expected to be on customers’ doorsteps by the end of the year.

“Kno’s extraordinary benefits represent only a tiny fraction of the overall cost of college, but its impact on the student’s career–and the energy it adds to the experience, the thrill of learning, and the ultimate grade–is dramatic,” said Osman Rashid, Co-Founder and CEO of Kno, Inc. “Even better, when you do the math, it actually pays for itself and still saves $1,300 in digital textbook costs.”

Kno has been beta-testing the product with students and the response has been overwhelmingly positive for both the single and dual screen devices. Far more than just a digital textbook, Kno is creating a powerfully effective new learning environment that will make students at all levels more successful at processing, grasping and retaining both facts and concepts.

“My experience with Kno has been really incredible. My books have become more interactive and the ability to hand-write electronic notes on the book pages themselves has changed how I retain information,” said Melissa Lin, a sophomore majoring in Biology at UC Berkeley that has been beta-testing the Kno tablet. “I see a ton of difference with the Kno. I can carry everything with me including my books, my notebooks and a browser for research. And, with the lower cost of digital textbooks, it will pay for itself in three semesters which is really great.”

Digital textbooks, which typically cost between 30 and 50 percent less than physical textbooks, will be priced separately and will be sold through the Kno bookstore, which will be accessible on every Kno device. Starting today, students will be able to browse Kno’s bookstore at www.kno.com/store/books, which will include tens of thousands of the most popular textbooks and supplement materials. Kno has previously announced that it is working with major textbook publishers including Cengage, McGraw Hill and Pearson. The company recently added publishers including Macmillan, Bedford, Freeman & Worth and Holtzbrinck as well as BarCharts Publishing, Kaplan, Random House and a large number of the University Presses.

“According to the not-for-profit College Board’s 2010 report, the average college student spends approximately $1,100 a year on book and supplies,” said Babur Habib, CTO and Co-Founder of Kno, Inc. “Kno can reduce that cost while bringing education into the 21st Century, providing students with a far superior learning experience than they have today.”

To learn more about Kno, please visit the Kno blog at http://blog.kno.com or visit us on Facebook www.facebook.com/GoodtoKNO, Twitter www.twitter.com/GoodtoKNO and YouTube www.youtube.com/GoodtoKNO.

Liveblogging the Bing-Facebook Bromance: "Underdog" Search With a Little Help From Your Friends

Kara Swisher — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 18:46:53 +0000

BoomTown motored on down to the Microsoft campus in Silicon Valley on a fabulously sunny day to liveblog the latest Bing event.

The software giant is updating its search service, announcing deep integration–part of a deal announced last year–with Facebook.

The theme, according to Microsoft (MSFT) SVP Yusuf Mehdi, quoting the Beatles, was search with “a little help from your friends.”

Let’s hope it’s not: “Help, I need somebody.”

11:35 am PT: Mehdi kicks off the show, announcing the line-up, which includes Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Well, it just got 100 percent more interesting here in this nondescript auditorium.

Mehdi talks a little bit about the future of search and making it better. He talks about social being an important part of it.

While I’d have gone with Barry Manilow, he quotes the Beatles.

Mehdi is followed by Microsoft Online Services Division President Qi Lu, who throws more love bombs at Facebook.

“With the partnershop of Facebook and Bing, we will be able to unlock…how people in a social relationship can be first-class citizens in a search experience,” said Lu.

It sounds so lofty, even though it is mostly trading movie review recommendations or good places to take the kids on a rainy Sunday.

Lu thanks Zuckerberg effusively and invites him onstage.

11:54 am: No hoodie.

Zuckerberg is also “honored to be here,” giving us a little history lesson about the origins of the social networking giant and its various and sundry efforts.

I’ll be honest, the lack of donuts is making me distracted.

He’s not actually saying more than bromides about “what would social search look like.”

And looking around at who would be the right partner in the arena. Microsoft! Of course! That giant investment way back when was nice too!

“They’re really the underdog here,” said Zuckerberg in the first interesting comment, noting that overdogs–that would be Google (GOOG), which he does not mention by name–never innovate much.

His take: Underdogs are the best.

12:01 pm: Mehdi is back to show off the wares in a demo.

First, what’s there. Web search in Facebook and Facebook status updates on Bing.

Zzzzzzzz. Get to the good stuff!

First, a module that brings in a Like module from Facebook into the search, with all the other information provided by Bing.

It is, said, Mehdi, particular for a person.

“This is going to profoundly change how we search,” he said of personalized experiences.

Mehdi also shows off a way to differentiate your friends who have names of famous people, who are the ones who come up on search first.

Interesting, but people search is not the biggest problem I have.

He also says more is coming, such as friend experts surfacing in search and Like in every result on a page that it was possible. Yipes!

Also, thank the Lord, the ability to turn it off.

12:15 pm: Now Facebook exec Dan Rose comes up and starts talking about the Facebook-Microsoft bromance.

Apparently, four years is an eternity in Silicon Valley in terms of a relationship.

Actually, four weeks is long, so congrats you two crazy kids!

I’d celebrate with a donut if they were here.

“More and more” social in Bing, said Rose.

It’s a match made in digital heaven!

12:22 pm: Q&A time!

So what more? The press is so unsatisfied! Yes, we are.

Zuckerberg takes the lead. New interfaces! More!

A privacy question. “This is Instant Personalization,” said Zuckerberg, who said that Facebook has five partners in that effort.

He explains Instant Personalization, saying he wants to clear up misconceptions.

It’s private enough, you oversharers!

“Just because it is all public information about you, this is really good,” he said.

But is it by default? Of course, it is. That’s Facebook modus operandi!

Opt-out should be tattooed on employees at Facebook as a requirement.

Bing does put up a warning at the top of the page, but only five times. Then, you need to go foraging to turn it off.

Next: Does Bing search queries get sent back to Facebook? Not necessarily.

But, “everything is going to be social eventually,” said Zuckerberg, as long as it is public.

Public is apparently the new black.

More questions about new Facebook Groups and other deets, none of which is that bracing.

Apropos of nothing, I am considering asking a question about the ever-exciting Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) scandal, just to jack up the volume.

I try to ask a question about Zuckerberg’s underdog comment, but no more time.

But Zuckerberg sort of addresses it, going on about why he has picked Microsoft as the favorite.

While he does not say it, it’s because Facebook is the overdog here and, as you know, every overdog needs an underdog.

Speaking of cartoon heroes, here is the opening of that classic television show:

Happy 25th Birthday AOL–Love, Snarky BoomTown

Kara Swisher — Tue, 25 May 2010 16:15:16 +0000

Here’s a video BoomTown did in honor of the 25th anniversary of the founding of AOL.

I had to miss the party back East yesterday, as I am prepping for the eighth D: All Things Digital conference–where, in fact, both AOL’s first CEO, Steve Case, and its current one, Tim Armstrong, will be interviewed onstage.

Instead, I did this video, which is inspired from an email Case sent to me recently calling me “Miss Snarky.”

While that’s completely accurate, I decided to have a little fun, all with the goal of feting AOL–which really does deserve much praise for its pioneering and innovative efforts to introduce the Internet to mainstream consumers without the snobbery so typical of Silicon Valley techies toward regular people.

The video aired yesterday during the events on the Dulles, Va., campus of AOL. Original execs Steve Case, Jim Kimsey and Ted Leonsis were there, along with about 500 AOL alumni.

AOL also dedicated three campus buildings: Dulles Main is now known as the Steve Case Center; CC2 is now known as the James Kimsey Center; and CC1 is now known as the Ted Leonsis Center.

Birthday events for AOL continue this week in New York.

So, here’s my video, as well as another video of an odd gathering of musical artists wishing AOL (AOL) happy birthday:

[ See post to watch video ]

App Watch: Registering for Class on the iPhone

Yukari Iwatani Kane — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:39:30 +0000

Stanford University was one of the first academic institutions to come out with an iPhone (AAPL) app last October. Now Stanford has debuted an upgrade, dubbed iStanford, which lets students search for courses, add or drop them and see their grades.

Previous versions only allowed people to conduct a simple search of courses, locate themselves on a map to navigate the campus, and check out athletic scores or other news.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The Microsoft Cougar Memo: It's Grrrrrrrrreat!

Kara Swisher — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:12:26 +0000

Last week, a cougar was reported to be roaming on the Redmond, Wash., campus of Microsoft, which led to all kinds of cutesy jokes about the new Snow Leopard operating system from Apple (AAPL).

No, BoomTown cannot make this stuff up!

Nor did I make up this original and very fine global alert that Microsoft Global Security sent last week, which assured employees of the software giant that “Microsoft Security will conduct frequent patrols of all wooded areas of the campus.”

That’s more than you can say about how the software giant handles hackers!

Here’s an image of the memo (click on it to see a large version):

Previously, TechFlash had the text of the second warning, which gives cougar-fighting tips.

They included:

“Stay calm. Talk to the cougar in a confident voice.”

“Do not run. Try to back away from the cougar slowly. Sudden movement or flight may trigger an instinctive attack. Do not turn your back on the cougar. Face the cougar and remain upright.”

And, most important of all: “Do all you can to enlarge your image. Don’t crouch down or try to hide. Pick up sticks or branches and wave them about.”

Which, if you think about it, is even better advice for Microsoft (MSFT) Bing execs–this means you, Yusuf!–in tangling with search archrival Google (GOOG).

Rumored Apple Netbook Actually an E-Book?

John Paczkowski — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:15:19 +0000

Reports that Apple is developing a new touchscreen device are picking up traction and credibility. In the past few days, claims made in a Chinese-language financial newspaper have been reinforced, first by Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, and now by Reuters as well. Consensus seems to be that Apple (AAPL) has ordered 10-inch touchscreens from Wintek–the Taiwanese outfit that manufactures the smaller screens used in its iPhone and iPod touch–and that those screens are destined for an entirely new device. Netbook is the word most often bandied about for it, but given its size and function, I wonder if it’s not more of a tablet. Or e-book reader. There’s nothing much on which to base this theory, aside from another rumor that’s been making the rounds lately, as recounted by Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times.

“There’s something I keep hearing, and I don’t think I’d rank it as high as a rumor, but it’s an interesting story that I keep hearing, that for awhile, trucks loaded with books would arrive at a loading dock on the Apple campus, and offload big, big, big, big, huge loads of books, and then the trucks would leave empty. And Apple does not have a 100,000-book employee library there on the Apple campus. So one is prone to believe that they’re doing something with these books, such as turning them into text for some purpose we can only guess at. There’s been a long-standing rumor that Apple has been silently preparing to open a bookstore on the iTunes store, and they want to make sure that they have a very large stock of electronic titles when they do open.”

Interesting, no? Especially in light of these new reports about 10-inch touchscreen devices. Could Apple be developing a new souped up e-book reader–a TouchBook, if you will? Something on which you could read books (in color), watch movies, surf the Web and create and edit documents? Something that would upend and redefine the e-book sector as we know it? And are the mysterious “books” to which Ihnatko refers really books and not the device themselves…

PREVIOUSLY:

Unigo.com Gives Everyone a Say About College Picks

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:02:03 +0000

Research on choosing colleges takes many forms, including visiting campuses and studying the schools’ Web sites. But for a lot of high-school students and their parents, finding a centralized resource containing information about numerous schools still means buying one of the thick, costly printed guides to college that have been around for years. The Web versions of these books are surprisingly dry.

But there’s a new, free Web site that, while overseen by paid editors, is built on lively content submitted by current students at the colleges. The information isn’t just words and numbers, but includes numerous photos and videos for most schools. You also can create a small social network of people interested in the same schools or who share other common traits.

[ See post to watch video ]

In other words, this is a college-information resource built for the age of YouTube and Facebook.

The site, Unigo.com, costs nothing to use and supports itself with ads. Although it’s only a few months old, it already covers about 250 colleges and universities, and claims to average dozens of student-created reviews, photos and videos for each college. Its sophisticated search engine lets applicants comb all this material to find just what applies to them. For example, Unigo would let you see all content relevant to an Asian-American female applicant with conservative political views.

I’ve been testing Unigo, and I like it. In the sampling of college profiles I read, the site seems to have struck a good balance between the immediacy and candor of student submissions, and the professionalism needed to weed out wildly biased or inaccurate claims.

The site, founded by a 26-year-old who formerly created printed college guides, says it employs 19 full-time editors. This team uses information from a nationwide network of 300 representatives on campuses to create each college’s profile. Each representative rounds up contributions from others on campus, so that the site claims that over 15,000 students contributed to the profiles of the first 250 colleges.

Reviews, photos and videos can also be submitted out of the blue, and these are also eventually reviewed by the editors.

Each profile starts with a fairly long editor-written overview, liberally sprinkled with comments from students and accompanied by basic information, statistics and rankings.

But the heart of Unigo’s look at each college is student-created, in multiple forms. For instance, the site’s section on the University of Michigan includes 92 written student reviews, some running to thousands of words; 35 photos; 36 videos; and 10 student-written “documents.” The latter are often by campus journalists and cover things like athletics or critiques of nearby restaurants.

The videos are the most interesting part of Unigo, because they provide a look at current students and at the campus that isn’t often captured in standard guides. Most of the videos are fairly short, some only containing the answer to a single question like “What’s the best or worst thing about this school?” But others include opinions on issues like what kinds of students fit in best or worst on campus, or minitours of the campus or of typical dorms.

One student video I watched was a walk down the main street of the college town. Others are reflections on the school’s reputation, or on why the student chose one school over another. Another was about a student’s biggest freshman-year mistake (he took Classical Mythology, found it boring, didn’t do the work and flunked the course.)

I stumbled on a rap video submitted by a student from Clarkson University, which doesn’t yet have a review on Unigo, in which the rapper comments on the alumni, the architecture and the weather at the Potsdam, New York, school.

Unigo also contains articles on general topics, such as how to decide what size of college is best for you, and how to get the most out of a college tour.

While the editors ban personal attacks and nudity, they don’t bar negative comments. Unigo deliberately seeks out pro and con opinions. Many of the student submissions are enthusiastically positive, but plenty are negative comments on campus social life, the costs, the food, the faculty, the dorms and other topics.

The site feels surprisingly full for such a young venture, but it has some quirks and issues. Coverage is uneven. For instance, Vassar College in New York boasts 117 reviews and 42 videos, while the much larger University of Kansas has only 45 reviews and three videos. Finding the detailed search feature can be clumsy, because it’s not obvious on the home page. You can’t generate a quick comparison among colleges, and the site lacks any parent-oriented sections, although parents are free to use it.

Finally, there are just loads of colleges that aren’t yet included. The first 250 schools were “seeded,” with months of research and solicitation of student content. Unigo is confident it can get more schools, but only time will tell.

Still, Unigo is a good example of how user-generated content can do a lot to enhance an important topic, and still keep editorial standards.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

I'm Told Those "Top 25 Piracy Schools" Offer Great Remedial Math Programs …

John Paczkowski — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:11:06 +0000

Turns out Benjamin Disraeli was wrong. There are four, not three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, statistics and Motion Picture Association of America piracy figures.

The MPAA this week admitted that a 2005 study that blamed a significant portion of the film industry’s domestic losses on college movie pirates was erroneous. Touted as “the most accurate and detailed assessment of the film industry’s worldwide losses to piracy,” the study (PDF), described piracy as “the biggest threat to the U.S. motion picture industry” and attributed an astonishing 44% of MPAA company losses in the U.S. to college students.

Hollywood was quick to seize on that statistic and used it as the foundation of a campaign against file-sharing on college networks that would ultimately result in the Curb Illegal Downloading on College Campuses Act, the demonization of the “Top 25 Piracy Schools” and the Higher Education Reform Act, which ties federal higher-education funding to efforts to combat piracy.

Trouble is, that 44% figure was a gross overstatement. In fact, the MPAA now says, just 15% of the movie industry’s domestic losses can be attributed to campus piracy. How did it happen that the study nearly tripled that figure? “Human error,” says the MPAA.

Ah. Well that explains it, then. Makes you wonder about all those other sky-is-falling piracy studies we’ve been bombarded with over the years though, doesn’t it?

“If the reports are true that the new, corrected numbers are way below the initial and highly publicized earlier numbers, then the MPAA owes an apology to the campus community,” Kenneth Green, director of the Campus Computing Project, told Inside Higher Ed. “The corrected MPAA numbers clearly confirm what many of us have said for a very long time: that P2P piracy is primarily a consumer broadband issue, not primarily a campus network issue, and that colleges and universities are more concerned and far more engaged in efforts to stem illegal P2P activity than are consumer broadband providers.”

I'm Told Those "Top 25 Piracy Schools" Offer Great Remedial Math Programs …

John Paczkowski — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:11:06 +0000

Turns out Benjamin Disraeli was wrong. There are four, not three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, statistics and Motion Picture Association of America piracy figures.

Ah. Well that explains it, then. Makes you wonder about all those other sky-is-falling piracy studies we’ve been bombarded with over the years though, doesn’t it?